


Send It off in a Letter to Yourself

by likeadeuce



Category: Marvel, X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, X-men First Class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-16
Updated: 2010-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-07 08:14:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/63162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeadeuce/pseuds/likeadeuce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Professor Xavier gives the teenage X-men an unusual writing assignment, and Scott and Jean take advantage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Send It off in a Letter to Yourself

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on a journaling exercise from a freshman composition class, and as such is wicked self-indulgent of me. But it seemed to work for these characters.

Dear Scott,

I just started and already I feel like I'm doing this wrong.

All right, I see you over there, staring at me. You =/= Scott, obviously. You = the Professor. Scott is me. Scott is I. And I. . .you. . .he. . .Scott is sitting here in the classroom with his pencil moving, because Professor Xavier is staring at him and because this is the assignment. We're supposed to be writing a letters to our future selves. So – dear Scott Summers, on the occasion of your thirtieth birthday – (thirty? No offense, Professor, but are you sure any of us are going to get that old? That seems a long time off. Anyway). Dear whoever you are, down the road, reading this, you can see what it was like when I Scott you was were eighteen years old, sitting in a classroom thinking that he's too old to be writing letters to his imaginary friends.

Not that I ever wrote letters to imaginary friends. I used to write letters to my brother, who wasn't imaginary, although the idea that anybody would actually give him those letters turned out to be imaginary, because there were two of us but if somebody was going to adopt one of us, it was going to be the one who wasn't (probably) brain-damaged, and the nice people who adopted Alex didn't want to upset him with letters from his (imaginary) brother. Wow, Scott, that came out angry. You were an angry little shit of an eighteen-year-old, did you know that?

I feel like I'm doing this wrong.

*

Dear Jean,

It is a beauuuuuutiful day outside. Beauuuuuuuutiful. Maybe if you think about that hard enough, in the Professor's direction, he'll forget about this silly assignment and let you all go outside. Warren definitely wants to go outside. You just see him eyeing that window. Come on, Professor. It's a beauuuuuuutiful day.

All right, fine. :-P That is a portrait of you, Jean Grey, sticking out your tongue at this assignment. What else can I tell you about you? You're seventeen, and you're the newest student at this school. You're the only one who isn't a boy, which makes you feel kind of like the mascot. I hope that by the time you, Jean of the future, get to read this, there have been a few more girls at this school. But the Professor is just getting this program started, and he has to work with what he can.

Not that there's anything wrong with these boys except the things that, being boys, they can't really help. The way Bobby, who's barely sixteen, runs around in just his socks and knocks things over, and hardly finishes one sentence before he starts another because he just has so much to say, and you want to pinch his cheeks because he's so cute. (Runs around in his socks and his clothes, I should say, though sometimes his clothes don't amount to much because, I guess, he keeps freezing them or something. Professor, I know I'm supposed to pretend this letter is to me and like you won't even be reading it, but we ought to figure out a way to do something about getting Bobby some better clothes!)

Sitting next to Bobby over there, like always, there is Hank. He is the funniest person you've ever met (though he doesn't always mean to be) and also has the best manners and is just crazy smart but he isn't stuck up about it so you can't be mad at him even when half the time you don't understand what he's saying. Sometimes, you don't even think that the Professor understands.

Behind you, over by the window is Warren, who's hardly even writing. He keeps looking at the window and who could blame him, the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and he can fly! (The Professor thinks maybe you can fly too, or, you should be able to use your telekinesis to hover in the air, but you haven't exactly tried that theory out. You haven't done much with your powers at all yet, because you're still working on figuring out how to control them, how to use them without getting a migraine. This is about as fun as it sounds, which is why all the boys get excited when they talk about training and you just kind of want to hide until you can have your brain to yourself and only use it for thinking.)

All right, stopping. The Professor says it's time to change the subject. How about if I start writing about how it's a beauuuuuuutiful day outside? Because it is. I'm just saying.

*  
**Scott**

All right, I can't keep this up. I'm sorry, I can't. You (Professor Xavier) just said to look back over what we already wrote, and it's hard enough to think of something to write about without worrying whether I'm using the right pronoun pronoun – those are pronouns, right? I, you, he, she, it. Me, you, they. I thought so, but for a minute there I blanked out. Have I mentioned that school is not my thing? Not that I don't like it, don't get me wrong, I just never really got a chance to finish. Jean's younger than me and she's already graduated, Warren went to some fancy prep school, Hank could have been teaching classes by the time he was twelve, probably and Bobby. . .well, probably even Bobby is ahead of me. That doesn't mean I'm not trying, just. . .yeah.

That's not the point. It's just that I'm sitting here trying to write and my hand hurts and I can't try to think about who I'm supposed to be writing to and honestly isn't this whole thing basically kind of BS?

Sorry, but you said we could write anything we wanted. You = Professor. And it is pretty much BS. This isn't any kind of letter. This is just something else you'll pick up and you'll mark it or you'll throw it away and you're not going to give it back to me on my thirtieth birthday any more than anybody gave those old letters to Alex. Sorry to be so blunt about it.

I know that I'm doing this wrong, and I don't care.

*

**Jean**

And now we're supposed to read back over, and see if we're leaving anything out. Gee, well, that's a mystery. Jean, the Professor, Bobby, Hank, Warren. What – or who – whom? -- could I possibly be leaving out?

That, future Jean, on the occasion of your thirtieth birthday, is a rhetorical question.

But you might not know that. Maybe you don't even remember who was in this class. Maybe the school, the professor, the whole idea of being X-men is just in your memory as some weird adolescent phase.

But I don't think so. I bet all of these people are still a big part of your life. And just maybe, by now, you've learned how to crack the code of Scott Summers.

You've had this problem your whole life, Jean. Mom has this story about taking you to the SPCA to pick out a puppy, and there was a whole litter that came up running around you and licking your hand and jumping in your lap, and you walked right past them to this little one curled up in the corner, just shaking and scared and crying when you tried to pet it. You know this story, right? You wish it had a happy ending, that you took the little dog home, your Charlie Brown Christmas tree of a pet and you grew up very happy together. Of course, you know what really happened. You tried to pet the puppy and it snarled at you, and Mom thought it was biting and you said it wasn't and then you started to cry and she made you wait in the car. A little bit later, Mom and Sara came out with one of the friendly little puppies. It was fine. He was fine. But he was never really your dog. Mom always said you didn't like dogs, because of that one that tried to bite you.

That wasn't the point.

I forgot why I was telling this story. I started out talking about Scott. Huh. Let me try again.

*

**Scott**

Now we're supposed to read back over what we just wrote and try to say the same thing in a different way. Or from a different perspective. I've already forgotten the question but I'm not going to put up my hand to ask. I kind of wish Bobby would, he usually does, but right now I must be the only one who doesn't get it.

I still feel like I'm doing this wrong.

All right, a new perspective. A different one. How about this? I believe you. I believe there's a reason we're doing this. I trust you. I have faith. I don't just mean this, this writing exercise or whatever. Because maybe this really is BS but it's part of something that I've told myself I'm going to try to believe in. No, not try, what's it that guy says in Star Wars? Do or do not, there is no try. So I'm doing it. Believing. Because otherwise there's just no point in being here. And if there's no point in my being here, I'm not sure there's any point in my being anywhere, and I'm not trying to say anything scary with that, Professor, I promise. I don't wish I was dead or anything, it's just that it seems like I came here when I was all out of options, so I believe it because it's right but also because I have to believe it. Do you understand that? You have my trust, Professor, and that's not something that I give out easily. But I'm telling myself to believe, because I need to and I hope that goes both ways. So as far as you and me, that's how this works.

I'm still not sure about the others though (they aren't going to know about this, right? Please don't tell them about this.) Like Jean. All right, there, I said it.

I don't know what to do about Jean.

*

**Jean**

All right, so, in the part before? It probably sounded like I was comparing Scott to a dog, and a mean runty one, and it probably also sounds like I'm saying everybody else is boring and I don't mean that. I like all these guys so much it's just –

It's probably a character flaw. I want everybody to like me. I need everybody to like me. Not like – like. I don't want to kiss these boys or anything. I already told Warren that, Professor, in case you're worried. I told him very firmly. Professor Xavier brought me to this school to be part of this team. Not to be the mascot. Not to be the girl that all the boys want to kiss. I mean, I've kissed boys and it's not like I don't like boys, but it isn't the be-all and end-all. And so the thing with Scott ought to make me happy because it ought to be a relief to have somebody who obviously doesn't want to kiss me. Or have anything to do with me, really, but then that apparently bothers me because I want everybody to like me.

Gah! (I know that's not a real word, Professor, sorry). I hate to sound so conceited. I'm really not conceited. You know back in high school I was one of those girls who had everybody write in her yearbook, "You're so nice, you're so sweet, you have a nice smile, I wish we could have hung out more -- " and has anybody noticed that none of that is really a compliment? It's funny because everybody else here talks about – well, they don't talk about, but they talk around – feeling like some kind of freak or an outcast, but to be honest (this is going to sound conceited again) I never really felt that way. I mean, I didn't have a normal childhood, that's for sure. I missed a lot of school after what happened with Annie, and being in the hospital all that time. But none of the other kids ever knew it was anything. My parents protected me so well. You, Professor, protected me so well. Everybody else just thought I was this nice, sweet, girl who was sick a lot and had kind of a tragic past, and if it wasn't for that, they would know her better.

I never felt left out, exactly, but I knew I never fit in. I just didn't know what was missing.

Until I came here. Now I understand. Now I know what it means to be a part of something. And years from now, when I turn thirty. . .Oops, I just remembered I'm supposed to be writing this to myself. When you turn thirty, Jean, I hope this all makes sense to you. I hope you're just smiling at this whole letter, especially the whole thing about Scott, because hopefully the two of you got to be friends, and hopefully you're still friends, and you're still around these amazing people because these are the only people you can imagine wanting to be around for the rest of your life.

Meanwhile, though, Scott still doesn't want to talk to you. And knowing you, you won't be able to leave well enough alone. You just had a really awful thought, which is that the Professor has told you that you have a lot of latent telepathic ability, that's sort of been lying dormant since the whole Annie thing – but once you get your TK under control you can start working on that too. But it would be completely unethical to use mind-reading to figure out what's going on with Scott. That would be unethical, right? This whole idea is kind of complicated. But still, I wonder.

*

**Scott**

It's not that I don't like Jean being here. I understand why she is, I absolutely do. I understand why she needs the school, and I absolutely know she's going to be a good addition to the team when she has a few of her control issues worked out. And I'm not exactly one to judge when it comes to that, am I? It's not as though you (Professor) can make a visor for her brain waves. I don't mind her being here.

It's just that – I'm trusting you, so I guess I should be honest in return, even though it isn't like you don't already know – it would be easier in a lot of ways if she wasn't here. It was easier before she was. I'm not saying this because I don't want girls here, either. I mean, I don't want girls here the way Warren obviously wants girls here. But girls could be fine if they can pull their weight. But it's not because she's a girl, it's because of the kind of girl. . . the kind of person . . .

I'm not explaining this very well. After I left the orphanage, when I was living with Jack – that's not a time I like to talk about much, obviously. All right, I don't like to talk about anything in the past very much, even the parts I can remember. But that time was especially bad, running around from town to town, going to school when and where I could, not because I even liked school – I wasn't any good at it, I was always behind – but because it gave me – I don't know, being in school and hating it felt kind of sort of like a normal teenage thing. And at one of those schools, three or four schools ago, there was a girl named – Amie, I think, one of those weird spellings. It doesn't matter. She called herself 'Bird.' I asked her who gave her that nickname and she said she did – you know those kids who change their names because they don't like who they are? (That's what I thought then. Now I – Cyclops -- pause for irony. And continue). She was one of those girls who wore all black, down to lipstick and eyeshadow and nail polish, and had her head half shaved and a little ring in her nose, and she called herself 'Bird.' I just came into the class, and tried to sit in the back and wondered if this would be one of those places where no one noticed me, or where somebody did and decided to make my life miserable.

But a weird thing happened with this girl, Bird. She noticed me, and she decided to be my friend. She didn't have any other friends, that I could tell, but she sort of zeroed in on me like she knew we'd have something in common. She came to me after the first class, she offered to share her notes, asked me to eat lunch with her (and by 'eat lunch,' I mean, smoke cigarettes behind the gym – which I did; I hope that's not too scandalous). That was one of the better schools, really, because hardly anybody did notice me, and if they did they somehow decided I wasn't worth messing with. Bird said it was her, that she knew how to make herself invisible. I don't know how she did it, but it wasn't a bad time while it lasted. Jack and I didn't stay in that town very long, of course. We never did, and I told that to Bird, up front. That we were just going to be passing through. And then we left. And that's the end of the story.

*  
**Jean**

I can't figure out why this is such a big deal to me. It's like I'm getting obsessed or something. Whenever I figure I'm going to see Scott, I have these whole elaborate conversations scripted out in my head, and of course they never actually happen. I can't decide if it's my fault or it's his fault or if I just ought to leave well enough alone.

Like I had this whole joke made up the other day about mutation, I kind of stole it from Hank – about waking up in the morning and thinking I turned into a cockroach. It was pretty dumb, I admit, but I saw Scott in the hall and I tried to tell it, and he looked at me like he was really confused – because, honestly, well, if it was true, it wouldn't be the weirdest thing that had happened to us. Then I told him it was from a book I read for class, and he started asking all these questions about whether we were supposed to read it, and how he didn't get the assignment, and I told him I meant for a high school class and then he was kind of weird about that. I realized I don't even know if he went to regular high school, and that I don't actually know anything about him except that Hank said he's an orphan but I don't even know if that's true, and it didn't seem like my place to ask. And when I left I think he was going to the library because the next time I saw him he had a whole stack of books, and I'm afraid I made him feel like I thought he was stupid, and I was the one just trying to make a dumb joke. Arrgh. Why are people so hard?

*  
**Scott**

So that story probably doesn't doesn't even sound that interesting, but that's sort of the point. If I had to come up with stories to tell about my friends before I came here, that's about as good as I could do. Cyclops and the Invisible Girl, smoking stolen cigarettes behind the bleachers because we didn't have enough money for lunch, and not even really talking about anything. Going away without saying good-bye because I didn't know how to say it, and not knowing what happened to her because I don't even remember her real name, and I'm not a hundred percent sure what town it was in. I'd write to her if I could, because as far as I know she wasn't a mutant, but it always seemed like there were stories she could have told, and they didn't involve cosmic radiation coming out of her eyes, but maybe they were just as scary. But I didn't tell my stories either, and so half the time when we were sitting there not talking, I wondered if she wanted me to kiss her, and part of me wanted to, except that I knew she only thought she wanted me to kiss her because she thought I was harmless and kind of helpless, like her. So how was I supposed to explain? I can't kiss you, I can't even look in your eyes. The weird thing is, she never once asked me why I never took the glasses off. I guess I kind of loved that about her.

All right, I wrote that, and now I have no idea what it is supposed to have to do with Jean. I'm pretty sure I'm doing this wrong.

*  
**Jean**

I know I'm not supposed to be writing to you, Professor, but you're going to be reading this anyway, I guess, and even if you don't read it you probably know. So the thing is, writing this and looking back over it, it makes me kind of worried about Scott. Like maybe he thinks he isn't good enough to be here, or he thinks I don't like him or I'm trying to give him a hard time, but I'm just trying to be his friend and we all want to be his friends, and maybe you could make sure he knows that. Because maybe he'll believe it if I comes from you. Also, make sure to tell him he's doing a really good job because he really is, and everybody's glad you picked him for the leader even if the other boys some times pretend like they're not. It's just because they like to play around but maybe Scott doesn't always understand about that. I guess it's not my business but it seems that way to me, so please tell him only don't tell him I said so. I don't know why, but I think he's kind of afraid of me.

Ack! Time's almost up. One last (silly) thing, then, that you're not allowed to tell him. The other day, when we had the conversation about the book, and I think I scared him and he wanted to run off. Right then, there was this little part of me that just kind of wanted to kiss him. Isn't that crazy, right? I mean, it's Scott. Everyone knows he's very very serious. He probably would have died. I said it was silly!

My hand hurts,  
Jean

P.S. Did I mention it's a beauuuutiful day outside? I think we should have recess next! Because I am five!

PPS. Seriously! You can't tell! I'm just kidding anyway!

PPPS. Burn this, please.

**Scott**

You told us to look back over these papers and try to figure out how everything we wrote about is all connected. I really don't think it is, though, there's no reason that thinking about Jean should make me think about Amie, because I am pretty sure (now I'm sure, then I wasn't sure) that Amie wanted me to kiss her, and that is definitely not what Jean wants. She practically waltzed in here with "Future Mrs. Warren Worthington" written across her varsity sweater. (Maybe one day you can study the mutation that causes Beautiful People – TradeMark – to hitch onto each other like magnetic fields? I bet you can win a Nobel Prize for that, Professor).

And it's not like I want her to want to kiss me (I'm in charge of the team now; that would be very unprofessional; whatever Warren thinks, it isn't what we're here for). It's just that I think – I think she thinks – same as the other girl, she thinks that the way I act is just some kind of camouflage, that I pretend to keep people at a distance, but underneath I'm something sweet and harmless. Like a puppydog. I didn't blame Bird for that but Jean has seen me in the Danger Room. She ought to know better. It makes me worry about her.

Time's up now? Sorry about this. I'm pretty sure I did the whole thing wrong.

Sorry.

-Scott Summers


End file.
